


somewhere close to you

by iridescentprincess



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Marriage, POV Multiple, Separation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentprincess/pseuds/iridescentprincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're married. Clarke gets a job offer in Seattle, so they eventually agree to try the long-distance thing. </p><p>What everyone says is true: absence does make the heart grow fonder. But Bellamy doesn't expect the rest of him to feel so empty. Neither does Clarke.</p><p>chapter one is in Bellamy's POV, chapter two is in Clarke's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> when I first got the inspiration to write this, I was expecting myself to write a 5k or less fic about separation after marriage and having to deal with the horror of divorce papers. I wrote more than that. I wrote so much that I'm separating this fic into two chapters, because I still need to write the rest.
> 
> let's just say that if you're looking for angst, you're in the right place. don't worry though, I'm a romantic at heart and there will be eventual happiness.
> 
> title comes from "Close To You" by Rihanna. highly recommend listening to that. and the whole ANTI album.

The fight that marks the beginning of the end is something that neither of them could’ve predicted.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Clarke screams, throwing a couch cushion at Bellamy’s head. She hits the wall behind him instead. “I can’t believe you would even say that, after _two years_ of marriage, and an even longer relationship!”

Bellamy, hotheaded as ever, doesn’t try to stop the impending argument. “Well, you’re one to talk! Saying that you’d rather take the job they offered you in fucking _Seattle_ instead of staying here, with your husband? Not giving it a second thought?” He pauses, his eyes crinkling in hurt. “Not even giving _me_ a second thought?”

“I never said I was going to take it, I was just wondering if I could!” she yells, trying not to throw another cushion at his face. “You don’t think I would stop to consider the fact that the job is three thousand miles away, or that I’d be leaving my entire life here?”

 _Here_ being their nice, two-bedroom apartment in DC. Bellamy thinks their life has been going pretty great since they moved here, after they got married. Their life consists of looking at the sunset over the city from their balcony, watching their favorite crime shows over a bowl of M&M’s and popcorn, christening every surface of the apartment. Going to the Smithsonian and giving her history facts about everything in the museum, her eyes rolling at him every time but with a fond smile on her face.

All of that goes out the window if she moves away. Bellamy knows it.

“And the fact that you said I’m choosing my career over you, and that I’m throwing our marriage away if I go…” she trails off, the disbelief clear on her face. “How the hell could you even say that?”

He realizes he fucked up when he said that, but he cannot stop blurting out the first thing that pops into his head. When he gets angry, he can’t connect his mouth to his brain.

“Because I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to take the job at the hospital at UW while I continue my job here with the FBI. We’re going to grow apart in distance, and then grow apart altogether. It’s inevitable, Clarke.”

Clarke scoffs. “So, you have it all planned out. That’s the only possible situation if I take the job.”

“It’s the most probable one.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it,” she argues, crossing her arms. “How come you can’t move to Seattle with me anyway? You said yourself the FBI is located in Seattle too!”

“Yeah, three thousand miles away from our home! From my sister! Did you forget that?”

“Your sister lives in _Boston_ , with Lincoln. She doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Seattle’s a hell of a lot farther away from O than here is!”

Clarke picks her work up off the dining room table, walking quickly past him without a glance. “If you’re going to get mad about something that I was only _considering_ , then I don’t want to talk to you right now.” He hears the door of their bedroom slam.

For the next week, they’re ignoring each other. It’s like living with a college roommate you don’t like, someone that you can’t avoid but don’t want to talk to. Except Bellamy does want to talk to Clarke. He wants to bridge the gap between them, clean up the mess he made being stupid.

When he gets home after a late night at work, and he sees Clarke already snoring in their bed, he wants nothing more than to crawl behind her and forget the whole thing. But when he gets into bed, he turns on his side, away from her.

He doesn’t get much sleep that night.

He doesn’t get much sleep that _week._

Bellamy calls Octavia after the week of silence, and all he gets is a frustrated sister.

“Okay, let me get this straight. You guys aren’t talking because you were fighting about a _hypothetical_ situation?” He can’t see her, but he can imagine her face now: her eyebrows furrowing and her steely eyes widening.

He sighs loudly, waiting for her to say more. He knows better than to respond while she’s angry. She doesn’t stop until she’s said absolutely everything on her mind.  

“You guys are married, Bell. There’s no reason for the two of you to be acting like children and ignoring each other while living in the same house!” she scolds. “Talk to her. Or I’m going down there and slapping the both of you.”

He tries following her advice, but it’s a lot harder than it seems. Coincidentally, that week consists of her shifts at the hospital being long, and his work at the bureau running late, so they almost never have time to make amends.

It’s on the Saturday after their fight when Bellamy finds Clarke reading paperwork at her desk, checking her laptop every so often.

He hesitates. They’ve had a million arguments since their wedding day; he doesn’t get why this feels monumentally harder. _Fuck it, she’s my wife for Christ’s sake._ “What are you doing?”

She looks up, surprised that he’s actually speaking to her, and Bellamy’s heart breaks a little. They really can’t keep doing this.

Her eyes go back to reading the documents as she replies. “I’m looking over the documents I have to sign that tell me about the job and its benefits.”

Bellamy’s heart breaks a little more. “So, you _are_ taking the job.” His voice sounds deeper than usual. “You’re just going to leave.”

“Bellamy…” she begins, standing up to go over to him. She places her hands on his shoulders, and he wants to shy away from her, but he can’t. She’s _his wife_ ; he’s pretty much used to the fact that he will be unable to resist her for the rest of his life. So he leans toward her instead, breathing in her scent of lavender and freesia.

“Before you say anything, just know that this is my dream, that this is my career we’re talking about,” she forewarns. Bellamy nods in understanding.

She takes a breath before continuing. “They’re offering me a job to be a resident under one of the most talented neurosurgeons in the country, Bell,” she explains, smiling in anticipation, “and I can’t not take it. This job is everything I’ve ever wanted. Don’t you remember me dreaming about this in college?”

Of course he remembers. They started dating in college, when she was a freshman and he was a senior. He listened to her talk about her future pretty much all four years of her college career.

“But… Seattle is so far away. What happened to our plan of moving out to Virginia and getting a house?” he asks.

Clarke winces, and that makes Bellamy instantly realize that it isn't her plan anymore. That it’s something she doesn’t envision now. “It could still be our plan. In the distant future. It’s just, I’m twenty-eight. I’ve still got a lot to look forward to before I have a family.” She scratches the back of her neck, moves pieces of her blonde hair out of her face. She’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“I get it, I do,” he says, and he does. He wants nothing more for her than for her dreams to come true. He thanks everything divine that he gets to be a part of those dreams. “But I’ve got that big case I’ve been working on for months, and I have to see it through. I’ll follow you when I can.”

Clarke squeals before jumping up to wrap her arms around his neck. Happiness shimmers off over her in waves. “I’m sorry I gave you the cold shoulder. I’m glad we’re okay,” she murmurs into her ear. Then she pulls back, her teeth biting her bottom lip. “We’re okay, right?”

He wraps his arms tightly around her waist, burying his face in her hair. “I’m sorry I gave you the cold shoulder too. We are okay.” He clears his throat. “Just promise me we won’t grow apart.”

Clarke shakes her head, says, “Of course, you idiot,” and grabs his face with her hands before kissing him, effectively shutting him up. He doesn’t really mind.

A month later, her bags are all packed and she’s got a plane ticket for a morning flight to Sea-Tac. They spend their last night together in each other’s arms, talking and laughing and making love.

The next morning, she’s kissing him goodbye at the airport terminal. They stand there for a few minutes, just kissing. They don’t have to say much. They’ve been saying their goodbyes the whole month, in a thousand different ways.

Raven’s there too. The mechanic has already hugged her best friend goodbye, and she watches the couple fondly before diverting her eyes.

“I love you,” he whispers when they finally pull away from each other’s lips, those three words ringing in his mind, his heart.

She presses her forehead against his and closes her eyes. When she finally opens them, his vision is full of her ocean eyes. “I love you too.” 

* * *

They have Skype sessions every day for the first two months, and call each other even more in between. They even tried Skype sex, which Bellamy has to admit is more satisfactory than phone sex.

When they talk, the only thing that the both of them love talking about is their work. They’re both passionate about the jobs that they have, having worked so hard to get to the place where they are at today. Bellamy constantly talks to her about leads that he has on the case, and Clarke tries to input her own opinion. She constantly talks about the things she’s learning, the surgical techniques that they’re teaching her, and he asks questions, always interested in hearing about what she’s doing.

The whole long-distance relationship一or rather, marriage一didn’t seem so bad.

But then Bellamy gets a new lead on his case, and he becomes submerged under piles of work. He’s only able to call Clarke every other day. Then it becomes every two days. When he finally solves the case, he calls his wife from the celebratory party at the office. Clarke cheers for him before telling him she’s got a surgery in two minutes, and quickly hangs up after. Bellamy feels disappointed for a few minutes before Miller, his partner, hands him a drink. The alcohol washes away every feeling except the pride he feels after finishing a hard case.

Time passes. Bellamy finds himself talking to Clarke less and less. Before he knows it, he’s talking to his wife every other day for an interval of five minutes. He expected that being a resident leaves doctors with little to no free time, but he didn’t expect feeling this _miserable_. He spends more time looking at the pictures of her on his phone than speaking to her.

Bellamy doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Clarke makes his life better in a way that he can’t live without. He misses seeing her blonde hair first thing in the morning, watching her fail at cooking, listening to her sing trashy pop songs in the shower.    

He paces the living room. He feels trapped in the place that’s theirs.

In a fit of pent-up frustration, he punches the wall, making a hole in the cream walls. He remembers when they chose the color for this wall.

“It’s not white, Bell, it’s off-white. A creamy beige,” she had asserted, a teasing lilt in her voice.

Bellamy had chuckled. “So, the color of your skin. My favorite.”

She had kissed his cheek in lieu of an instant reply. “I like your tan skin better. Your freckles too.” She had then proceeded to make a show of kissing every freckle on his face, and had not stopped until he had dragged her into their unpainted bedroom.  

The memory flashes before his eyes, his brain whirling a mile a minute.

 _Absence makes the heart grow fonder. What a fucking joke_ , Bellamy thinks. Sure, he misses her now more than ever before. But her absence mainly makes his heart feel like it’s ripping out of his chest.

The gaping hole stares back at him, and Bellamy tries not to think about how much it looks like his chest.

* * *

Octavia comes down from Boston with her boyfriend Lincoln five months after Clarke moves out. She visits him claiming that she needs to see how well he’s been doing without a woman to clean up after him, but he knows that they both know he’s more than capable of taking care of himself.     

After dinner, when they’re watching an old episode of _Friends_ and Lincoln’s volunteered to wash the dishes, Octavia finally says what Bellamy predicts has been on her mind since she stepped foot in his apartment. “Do you miss her?”

“Of course I miss her, O,” he answers. He runs a hand through his curls, exhaling loudly. “I miss her even more because I barely even talk to her now. It’s been almost a week.”

“Then fucking tell her that. Call her. And if she doesn’t answer, text her a thousand times. You guys don’t talk as much as a married couple probably should.”

She’s right. Bellamy’s never gone a day without talking to Clarke, let alone a week. “I’ll call her now.”

Octavia watches as he dials, and as he goes straight to voicemail. “What happened?” she asks.

“Guess her phone is off. The phone didn’t even ring.”

“Maybe she’s in surgery right now. Call her again in an hour.”

Lincoln comes out of the kitchen and joins them shortly after. He calls her after they finish two episodes of _Friends_. He goes to voicemail again. “Goddammit, she’s not fucking answering.”

His sister looks at the time. “It’s nearly eleven, so it’s eight over there,” she informs him, taking a swig of her second beer. “She’ll call you back any minute now.”

Forty-five minutes later, Bellamy groans. “You know what, I give up waiting for her. If she’s busy, she’s busy. I can’t do anything about it from three thousand miles away!”

Octavia places a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Bell, I’m sorry. How about we just go一”

The phone on the coffee table rings.

Bellamy just watches it ring for a second in disbelief. Then he’s fumbling for the phone and touching the screen. “Hello? Clarke?”

“Hey, Bell! You won’t _believe_ what I did today! I know I’m pretty much set on neurosurgery, but the hospital has residents doing other surgeries too, for more exposure, and I just helped repair a newborn baby’s heart! It was the most exhil一”

“Clarke! Why weren’t you answering your phone earlier?” he interrupts, anger lacing his tone. He gets up to go to the adjoining kitchen.

Clarke doesn’t respond for a second, probably in confusion. “I was busy, Bellamy, being a resident does that to you一why are you so angry?”

Bellamy recoils away from the phone before placing it back on his ear, hard. “ _Why am I so angry?_ Maybe it’s because my wife doesn’t even care about the fact that she barely talks to me anymore!”

“Bellamy… I’m so sorry. I know how hard this is. But my job is important to me, and I can’t be distracted一”

“Distracted? So I’m just a distraction to you.” He hears Octavia gasp in the living room, shocked at where the conversation was going. She can’t hear what Clarke is saying, but she can surely guess.

“You know that’s not what I meant!” she shouts, exasperated. “This isn't what I anticipated when I took the job. You think I want to be apart from you? Choosing to come here was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. You know that.”

“Do I?” he spits. He leans his body against the kitchen counter. “The last thing we ever talk about in our five-minute conversations are our feelings.”

He hears her exhale loudly. “Okay, fine. Let’s talk about our feelings then. You start.”

“Fine,” he says. “I regret ever letting you move to Seattle, and I think you should move back here and take your old job. We’re better together.”

“Bellamy, you know I can’t do that.” Her voice sounds quieter now compared to just a few minutes ago when she was screaming in his ear. “And frankly, I don’t want to. Being here, doing this job, it’s a pain in the ass but I wouldn’t take it back for the world.”

He doesn’t know what to think right now. He can already sense what’s coming, he can feel it. Dread and fear seep into his veins until his whole body goes numb. It’s surprising that his phone hasn’t clattered yet because of his slackening hand.  “Well what do you want me to do? Just deal with the fact that my wife is on the other side of the continent and that I’m unaware of what she’s even doing half of the time?”

“I want you to trust that I’m fine, and that I’m here doing this job to further my career as a doctor,” Clarke answers calmly.

Bellamy can’t believe what she’s saying. Does she not fully understand how this is affecting him? “And how long do you plan on staying in Seattle? For the rest of your residency?”

She doesn’t say anything for a minute. Bellamy waits, but he’s impatient.

“So you actually plan on us having this long-distance situation for the next four years of your residency. Or did you not plan on caring about this marriage the whole time? Escaped the marriage while you could so that you could become some big hotshot doctor in Seattle?”

He knows that he’ll probably regret saying that later, but right now, that’s what he wants to say. He doesn’t know what to believe anymore; this situation made him feel powerless, and he doesn’t like that at all.

“Bellamy!” she screams, clearly taken aback by his words. “I can’t一I can’t believe…” He hears nothing on her end for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice sounds muffled, like she’s covering her mouth. “If that’s what you think, then maybe we should take a break.”

He sags against the refrigerator, slowly dragging himself to the floor. This is really it. This is what it comes down to: her career and the distance between them. Their straight-out-of-college一despite the fact that they both still had school after college一marriage was falling apart.

“I guess we should,” he agrees simply, the strength to argue leaving him. He’s tired. Maybe a break is what they need, what the both of them need right now.

“Goodbye, Bellamy.”

“Goodbye, Clarke.”

Her phone disconnects and all he can hear through the receiver is a dull, long tone. He doesn’t move from his spot on the kitchen tile, and that’s how Octavia finds him a couple minutes later. Staring at nothing and thinking of absolutely everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think! kudos and comments are greatly appreciated. next chapter will be coming this week for sure.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd just like to say thank you to everyone who gave kudos, wrote a comment, or just fucking subscribed to this fic after reading the first chapter. y'all are the best. 
> 
> now I wanted to spice things up a bit, so here is the second chapter in Clarke's POV. I decided to do it because I felt like I wasn't involving her side enough. I'm actually really pleased with how this turned out.
> 
> without further ado, here is the last chapter.

Clarke ends the call before throwing her phone far away from her. It tumbles off the bed, smacking onto the hardwood floor.

She lies flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. She doesn’t do anything for several minutes, the only things registering in her brain the sounds of a busy metropolitan city hard at work.

She focuses on loosening the muscles in her body, starting with her feet and working her way up to her thighs. Then it’s her back, and then her arms and shoulders, and before she knows it, the tension releases from her entire body.

But then a single word bubbles to the surface of her mind, unable to keep itself from being noticed, wasting the time she took to relax.

 _Bellamy_ , Clarke thinks.

She buries her face into her pillow and screams. She screams until she runs out of air, and when that happens, she begins to sob.

Clarke brings her hands up and wipes the tears. Something hard rubs against her face. She moves her right hand to examine it. Her eyes meet both her engagement and marriage ring, shining even in the dim light of her bedroom lamp.

She wants to pull them off, but she doesn’t. She can’t. They still mean too much to her.

It’s still too hard to believe一they agreed to have their marriage on a fucking _break_ over the phone. Not to mention that there was, and still is, about three thousand miles between them.

She misses their apartment in DC, misses their Friday nights at the local bar playing darts with Raven and Wick. Misses sleeping in with Bellamy on lazy Sunday mornings, the early sun creeping through their bedroom window, shining on her blonde hair and his tan freckles.

She misses her husband.

She counts the amount of time she’s been away from him on her fingers. _One, two, three, four…_ Clarke pales. It’s been five months. Five months since she’s seen her husband.

Tears quietly run down her cheeks again, but this time she doesn’t try wiping them away.

The rest of her night is spent wrapped up in her blankets, not getting warm enough even though it’s the middle of August. Soon enough, she succumbs to her physical and emotional exhaustion from the day and quickly falls asleep.

The first thing that Clarke wakes up to in the morning is her ringtone.

She sits up, confused. The sound seems to be buzzing from the floor. _Dammit, why did I have to throw my phone onto the floor?_ she thinks.

She answers the phone without seeing who it is. “Hello?”

“What the fuck happened?”

Clarke stills. “Octavia? What time is it?”

“Clarke, tell me what the hell went down last night in that phone call or I swear to God I’m flying to Seattle myse-”

“Octavia,” she says slowly. She looks at the alarm clock on her bedside table. “Why are you calling me at six in the morning?”

“Oh shit, sorry, forgot about the time difference,” the younger Blake curses. “But you still haven’t told me what happened.”

It is way too early to be discussing this, and Clarke doesn’t really have the energy to talk before her two cups of coffee. She sighs loudly into the phone. “I don’t really wanna talk about it right now. Why don’t you ask Bellamy?”

“He hasn’t said a word about it since you guys ended your call. He was in a trance on the kitchen floor until I got him out of it. Then he went straight to his room.”

Clarke’s heart pangs. He’s hurt because of the choices she’s made. _It’s your fault. This is all your fault._ “I… Bellamy doesn’t want me here, but I do. Distance is hard. So... We’re taking a break,” she explains lamely, her voice cracking on the last word.

“ _What_?” Octavia yells. Clarke can feel the anger emanating through the phone. “I’m going to hang up and bother Bell about this, but you better be by your phone when I call you back!”

Clarke waits the whole day at her apartment for the call, but it never comes. She’s already told the hospital that she doesn’t feel well, which is technically true. She’s not feeling well _emotionally_.

When Octavia finally talks to her, it’s not through call but through text. Her phone pings while Clarke’s studying. _Bell told me. I’m so sorry. Hope you guys get through this._

She texts her back. _Thanks. I hope so too._

Clarke has never hoped so much for something.

* * *

She learns to cope.

It’s harder than anything Clarke’s ever done before, but she does it. She pushes through at the hospital, tries not to think about her marriage, puts her patients at the forefront of her mind. And it works--seventy-five percent of the time.

The remaining twenty-five percent is spent coming home on the verge of tears, having been held back during the day only to burst out when she’s alone. She feels pathetic. She hasn’t felt this sad since the cheating Finn fiasco, and even that wasn’t as bad as this. It doesn’t even compare.

The first month is what she deems the worst month of her life. She feels a void in her life that can’t be filled with anything or anyone but _Bellamy_ , and frustration and heartbreak are present so often that it becomes a part of her daily life, which, isn’t so great either, as it really consisted of her driving to the hospital, working, and coming home.

Raven calls regularly, of course, and picks up on her emotions through her voice. “Clarke, I’m really worried about you. You don’t sound like yourself.”

Clarke swallows. She expected that she wouldn’t be able to hide her feelings from her best friend for very long. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Raven argues, sympathy underlying her tone. “Just know I’m always here if you want to talk.” She pauses. “If anything, Bellamy’s wrecked. He spends all his time at his office nowadays. Octavia’s been trying to cheer him up, but it isn't working.”

She puts a hand on her forehead, rubs her temples. This break was supposed to be what was _best_ for them, but all it was doing was making the both of them feel worse.

Her friend and colleague, Harper, notices too, and she comes by her small one-bedroom apartment every week to help her tidy and drink through her stash of tequila and beer. Alcohol helps her forget, so she drinks a lot of it.

One day, Harper is leafing through her medical textbooks when she asks her a question. “How long is this break going to be, exactly? Hasn’t it been, like, four months?”

Clarke looks up tiredly from her laptop. “It’ll be three months this Friday,” she quips. She doesn’t want to admit she’s been counting the days since the break started, but she has. “And I don’t know how long this break is going to be. I’ve never had one before.”

“Have you talked to him?”

She sighs. She hates talking about this. “No, I haven’t.” She leaves out the fact that the silence between them is excruciating, to the point where she wants to scream for him all the way from here to DC and hope that he hears. He probably would.

Christmas is suddenly just around the corner, and she’s always liked the holidays, but this year she can’t stand it. It all reminds her of Bellamy. She wonders how he’s doing, how he’s going to be spending Christmas this year. _He’s probably putting up all the lights, all the decorations,_ Clarke thinks a bit nostalgically.

One night last December, Clarke had come home to find mistletoe literally _everywhere_ , and Bellamy had chased her under every single one, his lips puckered into a kiss trying to get to her. It had been like a little game.

When he finally catches her, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, they’re under the doorway to their bedroom. She had screamed and giggled when he started peppering kisses all over her face, kissing everywhere but her lips.

“Bellamy!” Clarke had squealed, trying to get out of his hold but not succeeding.

“Shhh,” Bellamy had shushed her, before effectively shutting her up with a long, soft kiss to her mouth.

Clarke’s phone suddenly pings, shaking her out of her memory. She leans over her phone to check. It’s a message from Raven. _Don’t check Facebook._

She frowns. _Why not?_

Her reply comes instantly. _Just don’t._

_You do realize this is just reverse psychology, right? It only makes me want to check fb._

She’s already typing to get onto the website when Raven responds. _Don’t say I didn’t warn you._ Another message comes right after that. _Love you. Talk to me after, if you want._

Clarke loves that about Raven; she can be sarcastic and tough, but she can show her love and affection for her friends.

She knows that Raven is probably talking about Bellamy, but she doesn’t know why. Clarke had badgered Bellamy for ages to get a Facebook, but he never got one, claiming it was something that he would never be into. Clarke had just called him a grumpy old man.

She forgets, however, that Octavia has a Facebook, and is a very frequent user. She takes pictures of everything and everyone, captioning it with the silliest things, like when she posted a pic of Bellamy and Clarke sleeping together on the couch when she visited from Boston last summer with the caption, _these lazy fucks need to wake up so that we can have breakfast!!!_

Clarke scrolls down her Facebook, seeing nothing of relevance. She’s about to give up when she can see _it_ on the bottom of the page.

 _It_ being the picture that Raven didn’t want to check. _It_ being something posted by an Octavia Blake, last night at around eleven-thirty, with the caption, _finally got my big brother to go out with the gang!_

A picture of Bellamy, _her husband_ , with his arm around a random girl’s shoulders, with Monty, Jasper, Lincoln, and some people that she doesn’t know standing next to them. The background is dark, but she can make out colored lights and bodies dancing. There’s alcohol in every person’s hand, and judging by the glazed look in his eyes and Clarke’s knowledge of his love for the drink, that beer bottle in Bellamy’s grasp is not his first.

She slams her laptop shut and pushes it to the edge of her bed. She never wants to look at a picture like that again.

So he’s going out and clubbing with people she doesn’t know now. Apparently, he’s forgotten all about their separation, and he’s not as miserable as she is anymore. Clarke breathes deeply for what feels like an hour, the quiet bedroom amplifying every breath she takes.

She leans over and picks up her laptop, setting it in her lap. When she opens it, she closes out of Facebook quickly and opens up Google in two separate tabs. In the first tab, she searches _flights to DC from Sea-Tac._ In the other, she searches _divorce lawyers in Seattle._

* * *

One thing is for sure: this is the absolute worst flight she has ever been on.

Clarke remembers halfway through the flight that she left her favorite headphones lying on her bed back in Seattle. The man sitting next to her smells like a sewer. The flight attendant spills water all over her leggings. And, to top it all off, when she gets up to go to the bathroom, the plane experiences turbulence and she falls flat on her face.

She takes it all as a sign that she shouldn’t be going back home to DC. Really, she was looking for a sign this past week, but of course the sign would show up at the _worst fucking time_.  

She had booked a plane ticket the day she started looking for one, a little over a month ago. It would’ve been a bitch to try and get a plane ticket to _anywhere_ during the holidays, so she had gotten one in January instead.

Her plane lands at night. She doesn’t expect anyone to be waiting for her in the terminal, but when she rolls her luggage into the waiting area, she sees Raven and Monty holding up a sign that reads, _DOCTOR Clarke._

“Clarke!” Raven yells, getting several people to turn to her curiously, but she ignores all of them in favor of her blonde best friend.

Clarke gasps before running forward into her and Monty’s arms, dropping her luggage in the process. “How did you guys know what time my flight was?”

Monty sends Raven a sly look. “Do you want me to tell her, or…?”

Raven smiles at him before turning to Clarke. Clarke can already guess that the pride in her smile is for herself. “I used my skills and hacked into the airport’s flight data.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. Only her best friend would do something illegal and tell her about it so nonchalantly. “Of course you did.”

She looks at her friends for a moment, who haven’t changed a bit, even after almost a year. They’re both still treating her like they would a year ago, trading easy remarks like she never left. Except she has, and she has to deal with the consequences of that.

“So, what do you plan on doing for your two weeks here? And, before you ask, _yes_ , I looked up when your return flight was.”

“There’s something I have to do before I go back to Seattle, but other than that I’m all yours.”

Raven eyes her skeptically for a second, but quickly lets whatever on her mind go. “Sounds good.” Monty nods with her in agreement. “So, where to? I’m driving.”

Clarke raises an eyebrow. “My mom’s, where else?”

Raven looks at her with concern, hesitating, but Monty speaks for her. “Don’t you want to see Bellamy, maybe? That apartment is still yours.”

“There’s no reason to go there right now,” she replies, keeping her answers vague but truthful.

Raven catches on. “ _Right now_? As in, later on there will be a reason?”

“Look, can we just get to my mother’s house? That flight was horrible, and all I want is to sleep.”

Her friends nod before helping Clarke with her luggage and leading her to the exit.

* * *

Clarke sleeps in pretty much the whole day the day after her flight, dreading the moment she will have to get out of her old bed in her old bedroom and face the real reason why she came here in the first place. Not that seeing her mom and her friends wasn’t a reason why she came.

Her mom had welcomed her in with open arms, telling her how happy it was to see her, asking her about her residency, and Clarke tried answering her thoughtfully.

Then Abby tried asking her about how she was doing in regards to her and Bellamy’s separation, and Clarke dodges the question by telling her she felt tired and needed to sleep. Abby had quickly understood, and bid her daughter goodnight.

At five o’clock, Clarke takes Abby’s car and drives the familiar route. She takes the long way; she needs to think about what she’s going to say.

Thirty minutes later, she parks the car in front of Bellamy’s一 _their_ 一apartment. It still looks the same: the drapes in the window the same ones that she picked out, the flowers in the balcony the ones that Bellamy grew himself.

She still has the key to the apartment, but she decides not to use it, knocking on the door instead. Clarke hopes he’s home, but at the same time, she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to face this, doesn’t want it to end, but it has to do. The sound of footsteps could be heard approaching the door, so she quickly fixes her face to something that she hopes looks determined and headstrong.

The door opens, and Clarke immediately frowns in confusion. She’s definitely not met with Bellamy, unless Bellamy decided during their ten-month separation that he wanted to be a woman. “Um, hi, who are you?” the woman asks. Clarke connects the dots very quickly as she looks at the woman, wearing shorts and a tank top. _She’s the woman in the photo,_ Clarke remembers.

“Who is that?” someone in the apartment yells, and Clarke recognizes it as Bellamy’s voice. Clarke stiffens.

“I just asked her!” the woman shouts back behind her. She turns back to Clarke inquisitively.

Clarke squares her shoulder and rubs her lips together. “I’m Bellamy’s wife,” she informs her, watching the woman’s eyes widen, “who is just going to go now. You don’t have to tell him I stopped by.”

Not waiting for a response, she dashes out of there, ignoring the woman’s calls for her to come back, ignoring every instinct in her to just run back and take Bellamy back and yell at that god-forsaken woman who is taking her husband from her. And this is what she expected, what she knew was coming, but it was too much to see it all in person. It was too _real._

She’s nearly at the elevator when someone yells behind her. “Stop!”

 _No no no no no._ She refuses to look behind her. When she steps into the empty elevator, she quickly presses the button to take her to the ground level before repeatedly pressing the button to close the doors, like somehow it’ll make it go faster.

“Clarke! Stop!”

She looks up. The doors are closing. She can just make out a sliver of Bellamy’s face in the gap between the doors. Her heart lodges in her throat as she watches the gap get smaller and smaller, but then a tan hand shoots out and Clarke gasps in shock. Angrily, she tries to push Bellamy out of the elevator, her hands going to his broad chest, but it’s useless. He grabs ahold of her hands and easily moves her backward into the wall of the elevator. The doors close behind him. Clarke’s trapped.

She doesn’t even get the chance to fully look at Bellamy and realize that he’s really right in front of her before he’s releasing her hands to press an elevator button that Clarke can’t see. The elevator suddenly halts. _He’s pressed the emergency stop button_ , she guesses. Now she really is trapped. Fuck.

After he presses the button, he’s still turned around, and judging by his tense shoulders, he’s angry.

 _He’s angry? Try being the one who just saw their spouse with another woman in their apartment!_ “Look, Bellamy, I just came here because you have to sign the一” 

He suddenly spins on his heel and turns to her. Clarke can only see rage for her in his dark eyes. “Don’t you fucking dare say what I think you’re going to say,” he growls, and he’s so close now that she can feel the heat from his chest. “Don’t you tell me that you came all the way from Seattle after _ten months_ apart just to make me sign fucking _divorce papers_!”

Now _this_ is something she’s quite familiar with. Fighting with Bellamy is second nature to her, and maybe that’s why they could never work out. The anger that she’s been holding back since she saw a woman in their apartment, since before when they separated, explodes. “Well, what the fuck did you expect me to do? Move on with my life? Stay married to someone that is clearly getting over the fact that we separated?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Clarke says her next words through gritted teeth. “I’m talking about the fact that I just knocked on the door of our apartment to find a woman who I’ve never met before on the other side of it!”

His whole face lights up with realization. “You’ve got it all wrong, Clarke, Fox is just一”

“Someone you’re fucking? I get it, ten months is a long time to go without sex.” Of course the whole _it’s not what you think_ excuse comes out of Bellamy’s mouth. Clarke doesn’t know whether she wants to hit him in the face or cry. The anger isn’t enough to overtake all of her other emotions, and there’s nowhere to run. Even if there was, she’s got the feeling that Bellamy wouldn’t allow her to get very far.

“Jesus Christ, Clarke,” he mutters, rubbing his face with his palms. “Will you shut up so I can talk?”

She turns to sarcasm. “I don’t know if I can. Clearly, we have a lot of catching up to do, _hubby_.”

Bellamy glares at her. “That we do. But to finish my sentence, Fox is my一our一next-door neighbor. She’s a friend.”

Clarke feels a little guilty now, but that doesn’t stop her from continuing their argument. “So you gained a new friend and suddenly you’ve forgotten all about me. I see that.”

Bellamy scoffs. “These past ten months without you here with me in DC, I have been doing anything but forgetting about you, trust me.”

There’s venom in his voice, but what he says causes her to step back. “What?”

He sighs. “Look, let’s go back to the apartment and talk there. Fox is probably back in hers.”

She nods impassively as he presses the emergency button back and then the Level 3 button. The elevator whirls back to life, whizzing down to the ground floor like Clarke had previously wanted, before going back up to the third floor.

When they get back to their apartment, there’s no sign of Fox, much to Clarke’s relief. She notices with a keen eye that everything in the apartment is right where she left it一books on the coffee table, her art on the walls, Bellamy’s jackets hanging on the coat rod. She tries to imagine herself living in this place without Bellamy, and immediately recoils from the thought. Clarke can only imagine how Bellamy must’ve felt living here without her.

And being back here, in the place where they have lived their whole married life in, the place that represents what their love is一she wants it all back.

They sit at the couch before Bellamy begins to speak. “Clarke,” he says, taking her hand. The fire in his eyes is extinguished, replaced with hope. “Five months without speaking to my wife is too long. I can’t一I can’t survive much longer on this break. I tried keeping my distance, for you, for what you wanted, but it was too much. I was actually searching for flights to Seattle when you knocked.”

She takes a deep breath. “The only reason I came here was to have you sign divorce papers,” she admits, squeezing his hand before rummaging through her purse. Clarke takes out a packet of papers. “After I saw that picture of you on Facebook with that girl, Fox, and”一Clarke glares at Bellamy as he smirks at her words一“I got jealous, okay? I have a right, I’m fucking married to you.” She crosses her arms, huffing. “I thought you were getting over me, and I freaked out. Divorce papers was kind of an excuse to see you again.”

Bellamy takes the papers from her hand. “You’re right about one thing. I am married to you,” he states, before ripping the divorce papers in half. Clarke stares at him in delightful surprise, but Bellamy doesn’t waste any time in lunging for her face, wiping the shocked expression right off her face.

She would’ve thought that after ten months they would have to get used to kissing one another before getting into the groove of things, but she was completely wrong. Kissing him was ingrained in her brain, and before she knows it, they’re making out like teenagers against their couch.

At one point, Bellamy picks her up off the couch so that her legs wrap around his torso, and he carries her to their bedroom without breaking the kiss once.

It’s Clarke who pulls away first, taking a look around the room. “Everything looks exactly the same.”

“I couldn’t change anything about the way the place looked after you left,” Bellamy says, dipping to kiss her nose.

She begins to tear up. She’s hurt him so much. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I’m so so sorry. I won’t ever leave you again.”

Bellamy nods, tightening his arms around her waist. “I’m sorry too. For making you feel like you were choosing your career over me. I know how important this career is for your future.”

She takes his face between her hands. “ _You_ are my future,” she asserts before kissing every inch of his face, seeping unspoken apologies into his cheeks and his nose and his forehead. Bellamy closes his eyes, relishing in the feel of her mouth against his skin.

He moves them to the bed, so that he’s sitting with her plopped in his lap, her legs still connected around his waist. “What about your residency in Seattle? What are we going to do?”

Clarke presses her forehead against his, sighing. “Guess I’m quitting my job in Seattle. I didn’t like it anyway, it rains all the time.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “No, no,” he disagrees. “I’m not letting you give up that for me.”

“How about a compromise, then? I’ve heard marriage is made up of compromises.”

Bellamy laughs. “Okay. What’s the crime rate like in Seattle?”

“You’d move to Seattle?”

“I’d do it for you. Those months spent without you made me realize that being anywhere with you is better than any other situation.”

Clarke considers it, but she quickly shoots it down. “That wouldn’t be compromise either,” she says. “I’m sure the FBI will allow you to transfer to Seattle for a bit. Stay with me for a month, and you can eventually help me pack my things while I’m doing my residency. I’ll finish my one year there in February, and we’ll move back to DC.”

“What about your residency afterwards?”

“I’ll finish it at my mother’s hospital, like I always intended to.” She can tell that Bellamy is going to disagree with this plan, so she adds, “Don’t forget, I spent those months apart from you too.”

He instantly sobers, shutting his mouth. Of course, he understands. “Okay,” he says, accepting their plan for the foreseeable future. “I guess there’s nothing left for us to do now except have reunion sex.”

Clarke snorts. “ _That’s_ what you wanted to get at?”

“Well, you were right about another thing,” he says, biting her earlobe. She moans. “Ten months is too long to go without sex.”

She giggles as Bellamy pulls her down onto the mattress, kissing her as he laces his fingers through both of her hands and dragging them over her head on the pillow, their marriage rings clicking onto each other.

The distance between them is nonexistent, and she’d like to keep it that way for the rest of her life.


End file.
